16 ms·

This article is interesting, which is why I submitted it. However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources.

This article is interesting, which is why I submitted it. However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources. As discussed for example in the oft posted 'exponential economist vs finite physicist' post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380

bryanlarsen 7y ago
The correlation between GDP and energy usage has been decreasing.
- gumby 7y ago
  For people who want to look this up the term is "intensity", specifically in this case "energy intensity" and indeed it's dropped dramatically over the years. (Its the kJ/$GDP, with all the errors that implies, but IMHO the trends are pretty clear)
- roenxi 7y ago
  Which could imply that: 1) Energy does not matter. 2) The link is being masked by import/export shenanigans. or 3) GDP is no longer a useful measure.
hinkley 7y ago
I figure as long as we have 100 million people of child bearing age we’ll be just fine. And it seems like we will have at least 5 times that many for a long long time But I think we will go a little Upton Sinclair. As I understand it, early development is dictated by the diameter of the birth canal. Artificial wombs would allow a far longer gestation period. Even a couple more months would rapidly advance brain development. All of this would be easier on the parents, which may mean more kids.
- novok 7y ago
  I don't think it's the pregnancy process that prevents having children, but others.
golemotron 7y ago
The earth doesn't have finite resources. Resources are defined by the resourceful.
- naringas 7y ago
  I disagree. There are some resources which are resources no matter what anyone says. Water, land, and food come to mind
  - vageli 7y ago
    That does not contest the point of earth not having infinite resources. Put another way, "one man's trash is another's treasure" meaning anything can be viewed as a resource if it can provide some kind of value. It does not mean that there is an infinity of a specific resource.
    - hanniabu 7y ago
      Earth itself has finite matter, so therefore resources are finite.
      - JahWob 7y ago
        Is matter the only form of resource? Energy is commonly used for as a resource, and the Sun presents a (practically) infinite source of it.
        hanniabu 7y ago
        The original comment was in regards to earth's resources. I wouldn't clarify the sun as earth's resource.
      - loeg 7y ago
        It doesn't take much of that matter to make world-scale nuclear power.
ChrisLomont 7y ago
>Earth only has finite resources Not quite true. For example, there may be finite amounts of, say, wood (at a given point...), but there may be infinitely things of increasing value possible to be made out of wood as tech and knowledge increases. So finite inputs does not imply finite outputs. As long as value can be added, even to recycled things, then the overall value can increase without (necessary) bound. We've seen over history ample evidence of increasing value possible from the same inputs. If/when some resources become scarce, making recycling of those resources important, we may conceivably reach the ability to recycle and increase value each round. At least until the end of the universe :) At any rate, no matter how you slice it, there is still vast room for economies to grow for the long term foreseeable future.
- lliamander 7y ago
  > At least until the end of the universe :) Which is the kicker. Whether it is Divine Judgement, Ragnarok, or Heat Death, there will be The End. We shouldn't get there prematurely, but I'd rather focus on making the journey worthwhile.
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    >Which is the kicker. Yep, given that physicists estimate the universe at 10^10 years old, and most end of universe scenarios like the heat death occur at ages like 10^100 years, I don't think we should worry about that limiting current economics.
lliamander 7y ago
The finitude of earth's resources is without question, but the scale at which that becomes a pressing concern are up for debate. There are in general 2 ways we can use technology to extend our viable resource consumption: 1. make our consumption of a resource more efficient 2. Use technology to find new uses for previously non-useful materials Furthermore, the Earth is not a closed system. The Sun's energy is continually pouring onto our planet, staving off our descent into entropy.
- cpeterso 7y ago
  > Furthermore, the Earth is not a closed system. The Sun's energy is continually pouring onto our planet, staving off our descent into entropy. We can also mine asteroids or the moon to get more building materials.
lurquer 7y ago
> However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources. Are you sure about that? Without question, the Earth has a finite mass. But 'resource' in the sense you are using the term pertains to the various ways humans can utilize the various finite components comprising the Earth. And that may well indeed be infinite.
- praptak 7y ago
  That's a huge bet, especially given that we have currently no way around the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb CO2.
  - lurquer 7y ago
    Why would you want to get around your presumed 'finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb CO2'? What does your comment even mean? Seriously... Is there some problem with the atmosphere being unable to 'absorb' CO2? Sometimes I think there are bots populating this site that randomly blurt out something about CO2 every few minutes even when the comment makes no sense.
- Asooka 7y ago
  I'm absolutely certain that the Earth has space for a finite number of humans. I don't want to live in a pod and eat a protein slurry of crushed bugs. Note also that human population was more or less flat for a long time of our existence - explosive growth happened over the last 200 or so years. That has been long enough that we structured our economy around it, but it's coming to an end. The free lunch can't last forever. Quite similar to the end of Moore's law and for much the same reason - people don't want to be packed too close together and transistors can't really get much smaller. I see it as more of a return to a norm than some catastrophic event. With proper sustainable resource usage humanity, should last on Earth until the Sun kills us. Which is a sort of tautological statement if you think about it - if our resource usage is not sustainable, our population will shrink eventually to the point where it is.
  - loeg 7y ago
lordnacho 7y ago
> elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources The material on the Earth might be finite, but as long as the sun shines, we can rearrange it. Ultimately, that is what the economy is. It can go on forever as long as we get energy. Granted, we are not doing a fantastic job of making best use of our star, but we are improving.
- Nition 7y ago
  I recommend reading the linked 'exponential economist vs finite physicist' article. It covers your statement in the first part.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  We actually cannot, unless some excellent new technologies begin to exist, you will run afoul of entropy or plain lack of space. Not to mention energy distribution network will be a problem. You would also have to make actually truly positive energy input rockets, which has not happened. (Price is not materials or work.) It's still a relatively high bar until we mine out Earth, but water might be a more pressing problem soon. (Desalination at mass scale is very expensive.)
modeless 7y ago
I think it's silly to extrapolate exponential trends 400+ years into the future while assuming that humanity remains confined to Earth. Elon Musk's goal for SpaceX is for humans to live on Mars, but Jeff Bezos's goal for Blue Origin may ultimately be more practical: to make it unnecessary for humans to move off of Earth by moving industry to space instead. With industry in space, Earth can remain a nice place for humans to live even as economic activity continues to grow for millennia. By which time we'll probably have found new Earths to colonize in other star systems.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

The correlation between GDP and energy usage has been decreasing.

gumby 7y ago
For people who want to look this up the term is "intensity", specifically in this case "energy intensity" and indeed it's dropped dramatically over the years. (Its the kJ/$GDP, with all the errors that implies, but IMHO the trends are pretty clear)
roenxi 7y ago
Which could imply that: 1) Energy does not matter. 2) The link is being masked by import/export shenanigans. or 3) GDP is no longer a useful measure.

hinkley 7y ago

I figure as long as we have 100 million people of child bearing age we’ll be just fine. And it seems like we will have at least 5 times that many for a long long time But I think we will go a little Upton Sinclair. As I understand it, early development is dictated by the diameter of the birth canal. Artificial wombs would allow a far longer gestation period. Even a couple more months would rapidly advance brain development. All of this would be easier on the parents, which may mean more kids.

novok 7y ago
I don't think it's the pregnancy process that prevents having children, but others.

golemotron 7y ago

The earth doesn't have finite resources. Resources are defined by the resourceful.

naringas 7y ago
I disagree. There are some resources which are resources no matter what anyone says. Water, land, and food come to mind
- vageli 7y ago
  That does not contest the point of earth not having infinite resources. Put another way, "one man's trash is another's treasure" meaning anything can be viewed as a resource if it can provide some kind of value. It does not mean that there is an infinity of a specific resource.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Earth itself has finite matter, so therefore resources are finite.
    - JahWob 7y ago
      Is matter the only form of resource? Energy is commonly used for as a resource, and the Sun presents a (practically) infinite source of it.
      - hanniabu 7y ago
        The original comment was in regards to earth's resources. I wouldn't clarify the sun as earth's resource.
    - loeg 7y ago
      It doesn't take much of that matter to make world-scale nuclear power.

ChrisLomont 7y ago

>Earth only has finite resources Not quite true. For example, there may be finite amounts of, say, wood (at a given point...), but there may be infinitely things of increasing value possible to be made out of wood as tech and knowledge increases. So finite inputs does not imply finite outputs. As long as value can be added, even to recycled things, then the overall value can increase without (necessary) bound. We've seen over history ample evidence of increasing value possible from the same inputs. If/when some resources become scarce, making recycling of those resources important, we may conceivably reach the ability to recycle and increase value each round. At least until the end of the universe :) At any rate, no matter how you slice it, there is still vast room for economies to grow for the long term foreseeable future.

lliamander 7y ago
> At least until the end of the universe :) Which is the kicker. Whether it is Divine Judgement, Ragnarok, or Heat Death, there will be The End. We shouldn't get there prematurely, but I'd rather focus on making the journey worthwhile.
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  >Which is the kicker. Yep, given that physicists estimate the universe at 10^10 years old, and most end of universe scenarios like the heat death occur at ages like 10^100 years, I don't think we should worry about that limiting current economics.

lliamander 7y ago

The finitude of earth's resources is without question, but the scale at which that becomes a pressing concern are up for debate. There are in general 2 ways we can use technology to extend our viable resource consumption: 1. make our consumption of a resource more efficient 2. Use technology to find new uses for previously non-useful materials Furthermore, the Earth is not a closed system. The Sun's energy is continually pouring onto our planet, staving off our descent into entropy.

cpeterso 7y ago
> Furthermore, the Earth is not a closed system. The Sun's energy is continually pouring onto our planet, staving off our descent into entropy. We can also mine asteroids or the moon to get more building materials.

lurquer 7y ago

> However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources. Are you sure about that? Without question, the Earth has a finite mass. But 'resource' in the sense you are using the term pertains to the various ways humans can utilize the various finite components comprising the Earth. And that may well indeed be infinite.

praptak 7y ago
That's a huge bet, especially given that we have currently no way around the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb CO2.
- lurquer 7y ago
  Why would you want to get around your presumed 'finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb CO2'? What does your comment even mean? Seriously... Is there some problem with the atmosphere being unable to 'absorb' CO2? Sometimes I think there are bots populating this site that randomly blurt out something about CO2 every few minutes even when the comment makes no sense.
Asooka 7y ago
I'm absolutely certain that the Earth has space for a finite number of humans. I don't want to live in a pod and eat a protein slurry of crushed bugs. Note also that human population was more or less flat for a long time of our existence - explosive growth happened over the last 200 or so years. That has been long enough that we structured our economy around it, but it's coming to an end. The free lunch can't last forever. Quite similar to the end of Moore's law and for much the same reason - people don't want to be packed too close together and transistors can't really get much smaller. I see it as more of a return to a norm than some catastrophic event. With proper sustainable resource usage humanity, should last on Earth until the Sun kills us. Which is a sort of tautological statement if you think about it - if our resource usage is not sustainable, our population will shrink eventually to the point where it is.
- loeg 7y ago

lordnacho 7y ago

> elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources The material on the Earth might be finite, but as long as the sun shines, we can rearrange it. Ultimately, that is what the economy is. It can go on forever as long as we get energy. Granted, we are not doing a fantastic job of making best use of our star, but we are improving.

Nition 7y ago
I recommend reading the linked 'exponential economist vs finite physicist' article. It covers your statement in the first part.
AstralStorm 7y ago
We actually cannot, unless some excellent new technologies begin to exist, you will run afoul of entropy or plain lack of space. Not to mention energy distribution network will be a problem. You would also have to make actually truly positive energy input rockets, which has not happened. (Price is not materials or work.) It's still a relatively high bar until we mine out Earth, but water might be a more pressing problem soon. (Desalination at mass scale is very expensive.)

modeless 7y ago

I think it's silly to extrapolate exponential trends 400+ years into the future while assuming that humanity remains confined to Earth. Elon Musk's goal for SpaceX is for humans to live on Mars, but Jeff Bezos's goal for Blue Origin may ultimately be more practical: to make it unnecessary for humans to move off of Earth by moving industry to space instead. With industry in space, Earth can remain a nice place for humans to live even as economic activity continues to grow for millennia. By which time we'll probably have found new Earths to colonize in other star systems.