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Someone pointed out the differences between "ecological" and "economical" thinking years ago, and I wish I could find the blog article again. The basis was tha

Someone pointed out the differences between "ecological" and "economical" thinking years ago, and I wish I could find the blog article again. The basis was that "ecological" thinking assumes that things will stay the same until they dramatically collapse, and that systems cannot adapt to changes in circumstances. While "economical" thinking assumes that there is a constant tension between supply and demand, and that as something becomes rare its price goes up and the system adapts to it. This paper is classic "ecological" thinking. It assumes that there are no other alternatives to the minerals used at the moment, and that therefore if the supply of (e.g.) Cerium is disrupted then the supply of iPhones will be disrupted. It doesn't allow for "Cerium was the best of three options we had, because of reasons x and y, and price z", so if Cerium becomes a problem, then the second best option will be used instead. Yes, the price will go up, but that's an adaptation not a limit. It also doesn't allow for alternative sources of the minerals. I know there are deposits of rare earths in Australia, which aren't being mined at the moment because it's not economical to do so. But if China starts messing with their supply, it will become economical. This happens all the time (there's a rash of new Lithium and Cobalt mines in Australia because of the tech industry's need for them). Likewise it assumes that because we currently have cheap fossil-fuel-derived energy to mine with, that mining is not possible without abundant cheap energy. If the price of energy goes up as the coal mines are shut down, then the industry will adapt and find other, more energy-efficient solutions. Just as "life finds a way", economic systems find a way. Yes, there will be collapses and corrections, and on an individual level those can be disastrous, but as a system it endures. High tech is going to last.

throwaway13337 7y ago
This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future. It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive. Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.
- L_226 7y ago
  > A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. It is possible that our species is creating a static ecosystem - one without biodiversity and blandly homogenous in its design to sustain our current way of life, with no room for "inefficiencies" (i.e. everything else on the planet that competes for resources).
- sametmax 7y ago
  If you run in a straight line, toward a cliff, you can hope that when you get there, a bridge will have been built. And it may work quite often. It has for us in the past (although we are kin to forget the cost we paid for it). But it's not a bad answer to suggest to slow down to give time for the bridge to be built, or just change course. You can also assume some of us will not die in the fall even if the bridge is not there, and part of the group will survive. But it's not bad to suggest we could choose another way. The thing is, even if the universe is not a closed system, our Earth system can be approximated as such, once we consider social/logistical/scientific bottlenecks, education, time available, speed of consumption and reaction, inertia, and our desire to avoid a genocide. I keep posting this video (in 8 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe... Because I wish more people would watch it. It's a very good mathematical and political explanation of why we can't continue just thinking "growth". It addresses the usual rebukes such as "we are not in a finite system", "this is not a zero sum game", "innovation/adaptation will save us" or "we can make it sustainable/reasonable". I particularly like the part where Albert Allen Bartlett explains how our growth affects democracy, comfort, health, and peace, not just resource consumption.
  - ratel 7y ago
    The analogy of the cliff seems nice, until you give it some thought. a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Will it costs us more than we were expecting when we could not yet see that 'cliff' yet. Definitely, but we were not born with foresight and have a limited time-frame of reference even if we can predict with some certainty. The later is why we are not investing everything for the time our sun will turn off its light. Call it the human condition. As for your insistence that 'growth' cannot be sustained. I suspect you mean population growth, although nobody is actually "thinking" as in wishing for that. I for one cannot have a meaningful conversation on that. People who really belief that is our biggest problem are no longer here to have that conversation with and all others tend to mean: There are too many _other_ people. That discussion has been taking place under many different guises, none of them remotely interesting.
codeGreene 7y ago
Thank you for putting so eloquently what I was feeling while reading that. Half way through, I remembered that I had read that article years ago, and it had me worried at the time. Since then, we've seen no drop in iPhone sales, that's for sure.
mcv 7y ago
I'd also expect many of these elements to exist in asteroids. Wouldn't it be better to mine those instead?
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Rare earth is everywhere, there just needs to be an economic incentive to mine them. Which is still low and you cannot get to an industrial scale in a few days.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  I’m sure someone will, the moment it becomes more economical than exploiting what we have on Earth (including recycling—it’s not like the rare earths are consumed, they’re just discarded because extracting the pristine stuff is still too cheap!) I’m not going to hold my breath.
- opencl 7y ago
  Maybe after the price of rockets drops by several orders of magnitude and the price of obtaining the elements on Earth also increases by several orders of magnitude.
perfunctory 7y ago
"ecological" seems to be an unfortunate choice of term in this context.
UweSchmidt 7y ago
Besides markets adapting and finding new equilibriums, there may still be ressources that run out and ultimately can't be replaced, similarly how the Easter Islands were deforested and life got permanently worse [1]. Maybe rare earths can be substituted in phones, and other technological progress makes up for the loss. Either way, the same market forces itself do nothing to stop the coming climate catastrophy and would happily find a new equilibrium with large parts of the planet not being livable. That's why "ecological thinking" is important. [1] https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09easter_island.htm https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09easter_island.htm
jacques_chester 7y ago
That's a fairly unfair characterisation of ecology as a science. In any case, while it's true that market systems can adapt to changing circumstances via the price system, it's important to note that the shifts can be abrupt and that technological progress needn't be monotonic. Certain physical limits will exist whether or not they are approached economically, just as certain economic limits exists whether or not they are approached physically.
FakeComments 7y ago
> Life finds a way... ...on precisely one of a dozen planets in the solar system, and perhaps one in the hundreds (or thousands?) we’ve found. It’s not clear that life can endure indefinitely, and obviously it can’t under some circumstances. Further, high technology could easily go the way of the dinosaurs, and require “re-evolving”, only to find the present conditions don’t permit as advanced of technologies.
devoply 7y ago
Yes as long as there is a way to make positive NPV that's true. Take that away and the whole system does ground to a halt.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

throwaway13337 7y ago

This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future. It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive. Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.

L_226 7y ago
> A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. It is possible that our species is creating a static ecosystem - one without biodiversity and blandly homogenous in its design to sustain our current way of life, with no room for "inefficiencies" (i.e. everything else on the planet that competes for resources).
sametmax 7y ago
If you run in a straight line, toward a cliff, you can hope that when you get there, a bridge will have been built. And it may work quite often. It has for us in the past (although we are kin to forget the cost we paid for it). But it's not a bad answer to suggest to slow down to give time for the bridge to be built, or just change course. You can also assume some of us will not die in the fall even if the bridge is not there, and part of the group will survive. But it's not bad to suggest we could choose another way. The thing is, even if the universe is not a closed system, our Earth system can be approximated as such, once we consider social/logistical/scientific bottlenecks, education, time available, speed of consumption and reaction, inertia, and our desire to avoid a genocide. I keep posting this video (in 8 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe... Because I wish more people would watch it. It's a very good mathematical and political explanation of why we can't continue just thinking "growth". It addresses the usual rebukes such as "we are not in a finite system", "this is not a zero sum game", "innovation/adaptation will save us" or "we can make it sustainable/reasonable". I particularly like the part where Albert Allen Bartlett explains how our growth affects democracy, comfort, health, and peace, not just resource consumption.
- ratel 7y ago
  The analogy of the cliff seems nice, until you give it some thought. a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Will it costs us more than we were expecting when we could not yet see that 'cliff' yet. Definitely, but we were not born with foresight and have a limited time-frame of reference even if we can predict with some certainty. The later is why we are not investing everything for the time our sun will turn off its light. Call it the human condition. As for your insistence that 'growth' cannot be sustained. I suspect you mean population growth, although nobody is actually "thinking" as in wishing for that. I for one cannot have a meaningful conversation on that. People who really belief that is our biggest problem are no longer here to have that conversation with and all others tend to mean: There are too many _other_ people. That discussion has been taking place under many different guises, none of them remotely interesting.

codeGreene 7y ago

Thank you for putting so eloquently what I was feeling while reading that. Half way through, I remembered that I had read that article years ago, and it had me worried at the time. Since then, we've seen no drop in iPhone sales, that's for sure.

mcv 7y ago

I'd also expect many of these elements to exist in asteroids. Wouldn't it be better to mine those instead?

raxxorrax 7y ago
Rare earth is everywhere, there just needs to be an economic incentive to mine them. Which is still low and you cannot get to an industrial scale in a few days.
Sharlin 7y ago
I’m sure someone will, the moment it becomes more economical than exploiting what we have on Earth (including recycling—it’s not like the rare earths are consumed, they’re just discarded because extracting the pristine stuff is still too cheap!) I’m not going to hold my breath.
opencl 7y ago
Maybe after the price of rockets drops by several orders of magnitude and the price of obtaining the elements on Earth also increases by several orders of magnitude.

perfunctory 7y ago

"ecological" seems to be an unfortunate choice of term in this context.

UweSchmidt 7y ago

Besides markets adapting and finding new equilibriums, there may still be ressources that run out and ultimately can't be replaced, similarly how the Easter Islands were deforested and life got permanently worse [1]. Maybe rare earths can be substituted in phones, and other technological progress makes up for the loss. Either way, the same market forces itself do nothing to stop the coming climate catastrophy and would happily find a new equilibrium with large parts of the planet not being livable. That's why "ecological thinking" is important. [1] https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09easter_island.htm https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09easter_island.htm

jacques_chester 7y ago

That's a fairly unfair characterisation of ecology as a science. In any case, while it's true that market systems can adapt to changing circumstances via the price system, it's important to note that the shifts can be abrupt and that technological progress needn't be monotonic. Certain physical limits will exist whether or not they are approached economically, just as certain economic limits exists whether or not they are approached physically.

FakeComments 7y ago

> Life finds a way... ...on precisely one of a dozen planets in the solar system, and perhaps one in the hundreds (or thousands?) we’ve found. It’s not clear that life can endure indefinitely, and obviously it can’t under some circumstances. Further, high technology could easily go the way of the dinosaurs, and require “re-evolving”, only to find the present conditions don’t permit as advanced of technologies.

devoply 7y ago

Yes as long as there is a way to make positive NPV that's true. Take that away and the whole system does ground to a halt.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]